this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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181
Do our phones listen to our conversations? The answer is complicated. (english.elpais.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
53 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Our mobile devices listen to and collect a significant amount of data on us, even without using our microphones.

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I don't know why people keep thinking that phones are listening in on every conversation just so they can advertise 'Volvo' at you.

  • they don't need to - we give them loads of data voluntarily based on location data, what we search for, things we buy, things we 'like' on social media..

  • they'd be stung for huge fines and reputational damage if caught doing it.

  • it'd take enormous storage and processing power to manage all that data.

  • Just think about how many things you talk about every day that you've never then seen an advert for (confirmation bias)

  • my Google Home can't understand me when I'm actually talking directly at it asking it a question, so the idea it can seripticiously pick out words while listening through my pocket is implausible.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (5 children)

A few things are very clear: 1. a phone with a voice assistant enabled has to listen all the time and 2. in order to train the voice assistant the data sometimes needs to be sent to the cloud and listened to by humans.

What is less clear is does this data ever get used for advertising. As you stated there are a number of reasons that make this unlikely.

Simple solution: disable your voice assistant. I do this today and I do not feel like I am losing anything. That said, with the pace AI is improving I can forsee a day when I would feel like I have to enable my voice assistant or I am losing some key functionality of my expensive smart phone service.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If manufacturers are to be believed, the only thing that our devices are always listening for is the trigger word. iPhones have a dedicated piece of hardware or circuit or smth that listens only for ‘hey siri’ and it doesn’t start keeping record until it’s heard that. After which it sends what you say to the cloud to understand what you said.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, exactly. And in order to improve the ability to understand the wake word, they need to occasionally send data to the cloud when there is some indication there may have been a misunderstanding. Also, sometimes humans need to listen when the computer has low confidence.

And of course everything after the wake word goes to the cloud. And sometimes it thinks it hears the wake word when it did not. This goes to the cloud and a human may need to interpret it.

So, some things your phone hears will go to the cloud without the wake word. And humans sometimes listen to them. This is pretty clear. Is this malicious or nefarious? Probably not. But it is complex and hard for unsophisticated end users to understand. And the reality is your phone absolutely does 110% spy on you. Just not by listening to you. It is easy to understand why so many people refuse to believe their voice assistants are not spying on them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is generally wrong. Disconnect your device from the internet, and on most (for sure Siri/Alexa) will still activate if they hear the wake word. They won't activate it they don't. Both companies have basically said that the wake word functionality is hardware blocked, and that's not been disproven.

Second, not all assistants/companies are created equal. For example, Apple has made the process of involving human review opt-in. Apple also has no incentive to use this data for anything other than improving Siri. They're not an advertising company and if anything are fairly hostile to others using Apple customer's data for that type of thing without explicit consent. Contrary to Alexa/Google, which has an incentive to use your Voice recordings to advertise to you, EG: you ask your VA what the symptoms of food borne illness are, they show an ad or suggest a search for pepto.

And the reality is your phone absolutely does 110% spy on you. Just not by listening to you. It is easy to understand why so many people refuse to believe their voice assistants are not spying on them.

This part is mostly correct. Again, in the case of Apple the phone isn't spying on you, but all of the shit you put on it is. All of those apps are collecting data and collating it in ways that people don't understand. So even though I have a burner Facebook account, since it's tied to my number or email (can't remember which) and I'm sure most of my social graph shares contacts with everything that asks, as soon as I created that account FB suggests to me a whole lot of people I actually know even though I gave it no other real data. People also don't realize that all of this data is often brokered through lots of services, so when you slow down buying tampons or something, another shopping app starts suggesting prenatal vitamins. This is a large part of the reason lots of major retailers have club cards or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think you started derailing when speaking about data collection (by the likes of Meta). Most of their data comes from cookies that track nearly every website because nearly every website has Google analytics or Facebook comments embedded. Their bots and reach extend everywhere. On every site.

These kinds of businesses have entire infrastructures built just to get your info. Any info. They have working composites and models for nearly every human. I mean think about what you can learn about a person if you just followed them around every day. It actually gets pretty scary because that’s what’s happening. We are constantly being spied on, watched or monitored to a degree.

IPs also leak a metric ton of data, like geo location, ISP/carrier name, even your postal code.

These companies have myriad of ways to siphon data from the websites you visit, the social connections you make and the data they get from the services used.

It’s less about your phone and more about how many parties have access to the feature or service.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

My opinion here is. Sure keep the valid stuff provided the user agreed to it. Have an opt-out though where data is analysed for whatever purpose then deleted. I don't know why they cannot keep data for a day, run analysis and delete on a rolling basis. The benefit of having old data to run improved analysis on is negligible when you're getting as much new data daily as they do.

But, regardless the excerpts it sends when it thinks you might have said the wake word which turn out to be false should be deleted. Do any short analysis for the why right away and delete. Because it really wasn't for the phone/personal assistant.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

a phone with a voice assistant enabled has to listen all the time

Yes, but this doesn't happen online. Your voice is not constantly being sent to Amazon or Google servers for activating the voice assistant. It's an offline feature that only reacts to the specific word. That's also the reason why you can't change the activation word.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s also the reason why you can’t change the activation word.

No, the reason why you can't change the activation word is because each one is tied to a recognizable and highly marketable identity. Amazon does not want you to change the name of Alexa because they want you to repeat their marketing brand over and over and over again.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Funnily enough, you can change the Alexa wake word (edit: on certain devices, I can change it on my Show but not my Tap). It can be “Echo”, “Amazon”, “Computer” and for some reason “Ziggy” (someone is a big fan of Bowie or Sunday morning cartoons?)

I know you can’t change Siri, I’m not sure about Google but I assume that can’t be changed either.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Echo is another Amazon brand word, and Amazon, of course. Computer is so common of a word that nobody would ever want to change it to that.

Also, Ziggy was the computer on Quantum Leap.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for solving the “Ziggy” one for me! And I agree I feel like “Computer” was for elderly grandmas.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

"Computer" is most certainly meant for Star Trek fans. But yeah, it's a pretty impractical choice

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Google used to respond to "OK Jarvis" and maybe a couple other things back when it was new. I haven't tried it in a long time to see if it works anymore though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I’ve never enabled voice shit and never will. Even if it’s all on-device on my phone. If I’m forced to, it’s back to a SideKick.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You don't have to even disable it, just turn off voice commands. You can still activate it by pushing a button. Personally Ive been using Bing chat over Google assistant for a few months now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've tried everything to try get rid of google's voice assistant on my phone, stripped it right back and disabled it and then went into the settings in google and my phone but still every time I turn on my wireless headphones it always pops up. It's doing my head in, why can't I stop it!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Give me a way to physically shut off the microphone (like a camera shield on business laptops), then we will talk.

Strange topics had popped up in my Google feed after l spoke to someone about something I've never googled before

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right but if THEY Googled it, and Google knows that you share a connection (they do), they can recommend stuff to you based on that.

There’s no need for them to listen to your conversations to do this. As someone else said, think of how often you talk about something and DON’T get advertisements for it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mentioned elsewhere, but people also don't realize that this data is often collected in ways they don't expect. For example, if you have a club card at a retailer, your purchase data is likely being shared outside of just that retailer. So you go to the store and buy some kitty litter for the first time. Then all of a sudden one of your other services start showing you ads for cat toys. Location data is sold all of the time now, and that's often through carriers. Oh, you started going to the gym, best show some ads for workout gear...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You don’t even need a loyalty card at that retailer. Your payments get sold by the payment processing companies to data harvesters, including Google.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same here. If I go to a house with a football game or tv show blasting, the next day I see news related to this. It is not something I have googled.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Did you have your location services turned on around other people who likely did google that kind of thing? Or connect to the wifi in that house that almost certainly put in a search or 2 for that game? Or people who were there that Google knows you interact with? Did they Google it? Or was it just a very popular thing that was huge in the zeitgeist that day for everyone? We are tracked in so many ways that don't require them having to store and analyze literally every conversation that everyone has (Both sides of the convo as well!)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The worst part is that you can get targeted by advertisements recorded by the other partys phone. Once upon a time, before I started blocking spotify ads, the ads I got were always very generic (fast food, spotify premium, espresso house etc.), but one time after visiting my cousin and mentioning that I had a headache, I was bombarded with only ads for pain killers for the full three hour drive home the day after.

Creepy AF.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you disable the microphone, you would also need to disable the vibrator, speaker, and accelerometer, all of which can be used as makeshift microphones.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

It's happened to me as well... When I started talking more about Free Software and security, the advertisements on my phone all showed me cybersecurity software or services to "ensure my privacy". It freaks me out too when Discord randomly opens and I get invited to some AR headset Discord server called "Kokomo"

Aruba, Jamaica, oh I know where I never want to take her now 😵‍💫

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Coughnsacough

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Whether anyone is manually connecting to specific phones to listen in live to conversations is a very different topic. I'd say it's a more important one then whether Google are recording everything so they can advertise things at you.

But yeah, that's not what this article is about.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense

So, is the United States Department of Defense interested in some random dudes in Belgium, or Namibia? That US-centrism is sickening sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Considering that Belgium shares signals intelligence with the USA under the Fourteen Eyes agreement, they're most certainly interested.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dude my phone will ever now then turn on and say "I didn't understand you" meaning something or someone turned on the mic to listen.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That happens when it mis-hears a trigger word. You can enable and audible 'ping' noise to play when you activate Google Assistant. It's in the accessibility settings. Worth doing so you know when it's actually been triggered.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The messed up part is that it should not be complicated at all. It should be simply "no." And it isn't, so we have a problem

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is essentially a no. Read the article.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, I read the article. It isn’t “essentially” a no. It’s “let’s believe that google and apple wouldn’t let this data be misused.”

As well as several paragraphs about a three-person study (wtf), and an inconclusive one, for no apparent reason other than to underscore “we just don’t know”. Then they give paragraphs over to Apple and Google for them to repeat their claims that everything’s just fine-and that’s it. That’s the article.

So it’s “essentially no” if you believe google wouldn’t harvest your data or that intelligence agencies and hackers can’t or wouldn’t listen in.

TL;DR, go into the Privacy settings of your phone and disable everything that uses it - that’s the best you can do.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It’s “let’s believe that google and apple wouldn’t let this data be misused."

This is only valid for your specific voice commands. They're of course transmitted to and processed on their servers. That's something they could misuse, yes, but that's not what the article is about. The article is about whether your phone always listens to you, and there's no proof of it. People are repeating this claim all the time, but no one has come up with a proof. If you think about it also doesn't make any sense at all. This would cause so much data usage, people would have definitely noticed that at some point. The storage and processing requirements on Googles / Amazons part would also be ridiculous. But no matter how you look at it, it's up to someone who makes a claim to prove that it's true, that called the burden of proof and no one has managed to come up with a proof so far.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Are we talking about data science??

There needs to be strict regulation on models used specifically for user manipulation and advertising. Through statistics, these guys know more about you than you do. That's why it feels like they are listening in.

Can we have more focus and education around data analysis and public influence? Right now the majority of people don't even know there is a battle of knowledge and influence that they are losing.

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